


failing spectacularly

by applecrumbledore



Category: The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Book 4, Canon Compliant, Cibola Burn, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 19:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15396024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecrumbledore/pseuds/applecrumbledore
Summary: “We come to an unexplored planet in an unknown galaxy to mediate tensions in a life-or-death situation, and you brought lube. You brought assault rifles and lube. I had to press you to bringtoothbrushes.”“I only like a few things,” Amos said. “I make sure I can do those things as often as possible.”Sequel toi bet on losing dogs.





	failing spectacularly

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to [i bet on losing dogs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14961837), but they're both self-contained stories. takes place during cibola burn. spoilers for that point and backwards.

 

 

**Chapter One: Holden**

 

When they decided after a very short process of elimination that Amos would be the one to go down to Ilus with Holden, he thought: _good thing I’m not in that place anymore, or this would be weird._

It seemed like a lifetime ago that he slept with Amos because they slipped back into their old rapport startlingly well, better than he ever thought. The only ripple in the wake of their one night together was a subtle physical closeness that wasn’t there before; Holden putting his hand on Amos’ arm to get his attention, Amos leaning right in over his shoulder to look at his screen. Beyond that, it was the same as it ever was, except once in a while Holden would catch his eye and remember staring at him as he sunk down onto his dick and he would have an _oh, right, that_ moment.

He wondered if Amos ever did the same. It came up so rarely in the years that followed that he entertained the idea that Amos had forgotten—no sexual overtures and hardly even a lewd joke, just the mutually agreed upon silence of two close friends who did something fun and private several years ago.

But, their impending seclusion on Ilus made him remember: on what was then the _Behemoth,_ now Medina Station, the two of them said their goodbyes and good lucks, he’d left, and then Amos had followed him a few quick steps down the hallway, and with a quiet _Cap_ , he put a hand on his arm and turned him, crowded him in up against the wall and kissed him. Holden remembered he’d put his hands on his face, as if shielding him from the sight of anyone loitering nearby. It was a long, slow, deep kiss, a promise and an apology all in one. Amos hadn’t said anything after, just clapped him on the back and hurried off while he could still taste him on his lips. But that was a special occasion.

 

—

 

Things on Ilus started awful and got worse, as Holden knew they would, but he underestimated how bad they would get and how quickly. Amos was more of a bodyguard than a co-mediator and it made him miss Naomi and her insight. He listened well, but his solutions involved less tact and more brute force than Holden appreciated. Still, it was nice to have someone.

When they needed to get away, either to talk specifics or just to feel like a team, a unit, the two of them picked a direction and walked. Amos never said much, just strode along next to him with his hands in his pockets and looked around. The walks made something unknot in Holden’s chest even when they didn’t work anything out because with just him and Amos around, it felt more like being on the _Roci._ It made him miss Naomi and Alex terribly, but he took what he could get.

One afternoon they hiked up a short outcrop and stood on the top, looking out over the land. Chartreuse clouds dotted a clear sky and Holden walked out to the farthest rock and sat with his legs hanging over the side. Amos sat on a rock a foot below him, next to him, and they didn’t talk for several minutes. After the tense din of requests, complaints, explanations, justifications and skullduggery of the colony, it was heaven.

“Can Miller make it out here?” Amos asked suddenly. Even after a few years, Holden’s instinct when Naomi, Amos or Alex brought up Miller was to say, _Miller’s dead_. But they weren’t talking about Miller, they were talking about ‘Miller,’ and it took a second to register no matter how many times it happened.

Holden said, “Yep. Unsurprisingly.”

“Protomolecule cockroach.” Amos picked a burr off the leg of his pants and brought it up to his face. “You think he’ll come in handy?”

“Sometimes he does. Sometimes he’s a peanut gallery watching all my bad decisions.”

Amos hummed and brushed more detritus off his thigh. “Well. Tell him I say hi.”

Holden smiled. Against all logic, none of them could think of the thing like it _wasn’t_ Miller. There was something human and sweet about the necessity to keep that connection and anthropomorphize some alien brain gunk. They treated him like Holden’s invisible friend and when he thought about it, it was generous that they even believed him.

“Will do.”

He looked over at Amos. He hadn’t realized how close they were sitting. He was learning forward with his elbows on his knees and the heel of his palm shoved against his cheek like a bored kid, but he looked happy enough. He turned his head, caught Holden looking back and let his smile reach his eyes.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“Clenched,” Holden said. “Constantly. To the point that I forget what it’s like to unclench.”

He wished he was as good as hiding his feelings as Amos was. It was a deeply valuable skill. He was sure Amos was as stressed as he was, but he sat there on the rock looking as if they’d just been on a relaxing hike. Or maybe he wasn’t stressed at all. From his perch slightly above him, Holden could see the crown of his head. His hair was buzzed so short that it was nearly colourless, maybe red and maybe brown. He had a tan on the back of his neck with a clear line a shade paler where it dipped past the neck of his t-shirt. Holden imagined him back on Earth in a different life, welding outside a mechanic’s shop in the summer sun with freckles on his broad shoulders.

Amos said, “Sounds about right.” He glanced out over the landscape and scrubbed a hand over his head, then looked back at Holden. “Lemme know if there’s anything I can do. Besides, you know. The obvious.”

Holden’s mind went ten in different directions so fast it gave him whiplash. All of them were innuendo: _I can think of a few ways you can help me relax._ His palms went clammy. He hadn’t expected that, he didn’t think he was _there_ anymore.

He must have made a face, because Amos stuck two fingers out in the shape of a gun and said, “Murtry. Pa- _choo._ ”

“Right,” Holden said. He watched movement in the valley below, the scurrying of creatures too far to see in detail and dust rolling like breaking waves. After a few more minutes, they left, and Holden had to make a concerted effort all day not to be weird.

 

—

 

Late that night, he stepped outside the community centre into the deserted street. He hadn’t been able to get a connection up to the _Roci_ and the absence made him jittery and pissed. He paced in a slow line down the street, focusing on his breath, on the feel of the ground under his feet, the slight extra effort of moving in Ilus’ heavy gravity. It was times like that when he wished he smoked; it was nice to have an excuse to go outside for five minutes and have something to do with his hands.

The blue glow that signalled Miller’s arrival at the corner of his vision didn’t throw shadows on him or the wall next to him and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to that.

Miller said, apropos of nothing, “You’re really in it now, kid.”

Holden let out a long, hissing sigh, stopped pacing and turned towards him. He was scratching his high forehead with his hat pushed back.

“I’m trying to think of how I could have possibly fucked up today in a way worth mentioning, and I’m coming up with nothing.” Holden put his palms out. “Enlighten me.”

Miller watched him. There were no shadows at his feet cast by the light of Holden’s hand terminal and Holden was mesmerized by that. He moved the terminal and its light flowed all around him, but not on him. But also not _not_ on him.

Miller said, “It’ll be messy if you fall for him.”

Holden was confused. Then he was shocked, then embarrassed, and then mad.

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

Miller shrugged. “Sometimes it helps to hear it out loud.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he spat. He started walking again down the dark street, carefully watching his steps. “Does this have something to do with you that I’m not aware of? Does Amos factor into all this somehow?”

“Not from where I'm standing.”

Holden rounded on him and reached for him, just short of grabbing him by his arms. He flexed his empty fingers instead and bared his teeth.

“Then _why_ —are—you— _here_?”

Miller seemed unfazed. His hat started to flutter into fireflies and Holden was close enough that their light stung his eyes in all the dark. The glow lit up the deep lines of Miller’s face and his hollow cheeks with their unchanging length of stubble.

“Thought maybe you’d wanna talk it out.”

 

—

 

The escalation from bad to worse over the following weeks was so seamless that Holden hardly noticed it happening. It seemed natural. Colonists were targeting the remaining members of the security team, plus himself and Amos. One of them got burnt to death for it. Basia was up on the _Roci_ with Naomi and Alex. None of that mattered to Holden because the planet was waking up and it was pissed, and if it was the last thing he did, he had to get everyone to leave. With all the murders and land claims, no one cared about Holden’s thing and it drove him crazy.

Amos didn’t leave him alone much after they learned about their imminent assassinations, which was mostly fine because it kept Miller at bay and he didn’t mind the company. He stood silently by during Holden’s increasingly nerve-wracking and irritating meetings at the town hall and neither of them had ever been so simultaneously stressed and bored. He sat with him in the commissary in the evenings, bought him watery beer and provided colourful, crass commentary when someone came to tell Holden their problems.

When Holden was thirteen years old, his parents sent him to a two-month survival summer camp at one of Montana’s national parks. He was holed up with the same dozen kids all day every day in tents, learning to tie knots and light fires, and he fell head over heels for a girl from Saskatchewan. When the camp was over, they both swore they’d make trips to visit one another, but as soon as Holden got back into the swing of his regular life, he forgot all about her. That was his first brush with how close quarters and isolation could make your feelings for someone seem very immediate. The situation was repeated on every ship he was ever on because there was nothing more isolating than space. Every time it happened, he told himself: _this is the summer camp thing and these feelings are fake_. He fell for them anyways. It made him break a lot of hearts, occasionally his own, and he’d never gotten much better at mitigating it. There was something mindless in his soul that hungered for comfort in desperate situations and was more in love with the concept of love than with its execution.

He sat in the commissary across from Amos and stared at his hands while he played a silent game of solitaire. He listened to the _fwip fwip_ of the cards. He could imagine those hands around his wrists, on his face, grabbing his ass, carding through his hair. He glanced up and watched Amos’ dark eyes look from card to card through his lashes. His heavy brow, thick eyebrows. His faint tan from this alien star.

_You’re doing it again._

“Cap?”

He looked up. Amos was looking at him. His mouth was dry.

“Sorry?”

“I’m about done here. You wanna play something?”

“I’m alright.”

“‘Kay.” Amos shrugged, swept the cards into a neat pile and stood. “I’m gonna lie down in my shoe box. Need anything?”

_Plenty._

“Nope. See ya.”

Amos raised a hand in parting and left. If he patted him on the back, he would have burst into flames. He didn’t know when it had gotten so bad, but stress was a pressure cooker.

It wasn’t the summer camp thing, he thought. This was Amos and there was a history there. It was different. He made a series of quick decisions and recategorizations that ended in him stumbling out of his chair and crossing the hall to where his and Amos’ rooms were tucked in the back.

The door to Amos’ room wasn’t quite shut when he peered in. Amos stood with his back to him and his head bent to look at his hand terminal. He didn’t look up when Holden stepped quietly into the small space with his heart beating in his throat, nor when he came up behind him, put his hands on his arms and rested his head in the centre of his back.

Holden took in the dust and sweat smell of him, felt his soft, worn shirt against the bridge of his nose. Solid and alive and familiar. His good friend Amos.

Amos didn’t pull away. He tossed his hand terminal onto his cot and his voice drifted down to him, light and amused.

“Hiya, Cap.”

“Hello.” Holden closed his eyes. He slid his hand down Amos’ arms to his wrists and looped his fingers around them. “Just give me a second.”

He felt the swell of his back as he breathed, the twitch of muscle in his forearms as his fingers moved.

Amos said, “I could give you something bigger and a lot more fun.”

Holden opened his eyes. “A dick joke.”

“Sure. Or a heartfelt dick offering. Take your pick.”

“How is your dick _bigger_ than a second? You should have said longer."

“I was in a hurry to say it and I got excited.” Amos turned around; Holden let go of his wrists but stayed in close, looking into his chest. “The offer stands.”

He could feel the heat coming off him and he was dizzy with it. It had been so many years since they were together that he lost track of exactly how many; post-Eros but pre-Ganymede, pre-slow zone. Suddenly it didn’t feel like that long at all, as if he hadn’t spoken to Amos a million times between then and now. He remembered their first frantic kiss over Belter scotch, getting sucked off when they were both so spent and exhausted they were hardly awake, sleeping curled around each other with hardly enough space for one. He woke up alone and found Amos in the galley with a pot of coffee and a genuine smile. Naomi ribbed him for his hickey and the marks on his hips and didn’t ask how it was until months later. Holden’s reply was a very long, hesitant, “Intense.”

He was farther from home than almost anyone had ever been, sent there to do a job that he was failing at spectacularly. He wanted something he could trust, something familiar. He’d settle for one second of feeling like he was in control.

“I want…” He needed to say it right, not because of what Amos would think, but for himself. “Something safe.”

Amos’ breath ruffled his hair.

“I get you. Alien planet. Alien galaxy." He reached out and touched his arm, his thumb pressing up the swell of his bicep. “Nothing more human than sex.”

“With a good friend.”

“Yeah.”

Holden ran his hands flat up his chest. He held onto his neck and tugged so he stooped down and bumped their foreheads together. The closeness and simultaneous restraint made his stomach flip with excitement, and already, he felt a bit better. Safer. In retrospect, it seemed silly that he thought Amos might say no.

“Been a while,” he whispered. Amos’ hands gripped his ribs and moved down his sides. Already intense. Everything about Amos was intense under his viel of indifference—he loved hard and hated hard and it was stifling to be the recipient of either.

“A long time,” Amos agreed, just as quiet. He slid a palm over his ass and Holden realized that the last time they were together, they’d been at less than one g, closer to a third or a quarter. He didn’t know why he was so excited about the gravity but it was something about weight and pressure of Amos’ massive body and it was thrilling. “Miss me?”

Holden scowled and took his face in his hands.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

Amos ducked his head and kissed him and it shattered him in a way he hadn’t expected.

Because the last time they kissed was on the _Behemoth_ when it was more than likely that one or both of them was going to die, he forgot that Amos always kissed like that: like it was his first kiss and last kiss all rolled into one, like he wasn’t thinking about anything else. It was insanely flattering, even though Holden knew he shouldn’t be flattered by it; it was just Amos’ brand of all-or-nothing, which was similar to but didn’t quite mirror his own. It was overwhelming to be the focus of that quiet passion, even if it also extended to complex circuitry, card games and liquor. So he dug his thumbs into Amos’ cheeks and kissed him back like they were dying.

Amos’ hands moved over all him like he was mapping out his shape, dragging up his back and down his arms, ripping up his tucked-in shirt to get at his skin. He couldn’t climb him like he did in low gravity and let himself be bent backwards under the onslaught of his hands and mouth. His lips and tongue were warm and soft and he heard himself make a hungry sound that surprised even him, desperate after only a few weeks without human contact. He’d gotten greedy. Amos ground against his thigh and he wondered how long it had been for him.

“Gravity, atmosphere, shitty cot,” Amos said against his lips. “We’re going _real_ back to basics.”

“The Earther experience.”

“You got it.” Amos yanked his shirt over his head for him. Static energy didn’t seem to exist here and his hair stayed flat. He pulled at his belt. “Heavy and wet and weird.”

Holden laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“There’s no way that cot’s gonna work.”

“Floor?”

“Guess so.”

Amos pulled the heavy blanket and sheet off his cot and onto the floor and Holden sat awkwardly. Amos’ body was warm and scattered with scars and it never got easier to see the worst one across his stomach. Holden watched the swell of his arms as he pulled off his shirt, the bow of his head as he tugged at his pants. It was urgent like a house party and intimate like a husband, familiar and still so, so strange. All the panic and frustration and anger and hopelessness of their current situation funnelled into whatever they had between those four walls and made it manic and passionate, as if Amos could fuck him hard enough to fix Ilus and give him an epiphany he couldn’t reach otherwise. Mostly he needed a break, and he couldn’t imagine a deeper, riskier indulgence than Amos.

Amos settled over top of him and kissed him, clutching his ribs and hips like he’d leave if he didn’t. Ilus’ extra gravity pushing the weight of his body into him drove him crazy. Amos rode his hips up into his and braced on his forearms, his face hanging above him.

“Been a while,” Amos said this time, his breath coming short. Holden could feel his dick like a railroad spike against his thigh. “You learn anything new?”

“Pretty much the same,” Holden said, yanking off his briefs. “Surprise me.”

Amos’ grin was all teeth. The room was cold and there was a light rain pattering on the roof and distant sounds from the commissary. Holden closed his eyes. Amos ran his mouth down his throat and his hot breath gave him goosebumps. He reached for his dick and Amos pushed into his hand and kissed him with a low groan. Instantly, everything he filed away years ago got pulled out of cold storage and back to the forefront of his mind. Amos said stupid, filthy things, and he swore a lot. He wanted him on his back so he could watch him. He asked him to ride him and turned to putty when he did. He went over all the facts while they kissed and moved against each other like he was unpacking after a long trip, taking objects out of boxes and going _right, THIS old thing_. He was so hard it hurt.

He mumbled, “Which one of us is gonna do the walk of shame to the commissary and ask if they brought lube?”

Amos shook his head and kissed him again and for a minute, they lost the thread. When Amos answered him, he forgot what he had asked.

“They definitely did, but we’re good.” He sat up and glanced over his shoulder to where his bag sat rumpled in the corner of the tiny room. “One mo.”

He crawled to the bag and started rooting around in it. Holden propped up on his elbows.

“You brought some.”

“Gotta be prepared, Cap.”

“We come to an unexplored planet in an unknown galaxy to mediate tensions in a life-or-death situation, and you brought lube. You brought assault rifles and lube. I had to press you to bring _toothbrushes._ ”

“I know what I’m about.”

Holden paused. He watched Amos’ hunched, naked form open pockets in his duffle trying to find whatever it was he brought.

He asked, “Was it… for use with _me,_  specifically?”

Amos found the tube of lube, tossed it up in the air and snatched it back in triumph. He returned to their blanket pile and sat in front of Holden.

“Crossed my mind,” he said. “Or somebody else. I figured it would come up.”

It was funny and disarming to talk to someone so casually when they had a massive erection. Grounding.

“You’re a startling opportunist.”

“I only like a few things,” Amos said, dropping the tube at his side. “I make sure I can do those things as often as possible.”

He put his hand around Holden’s nape, pulled him in and kissed him. Holden was surprised that he missed the kissing, not that he’d ever tell Amos that. With the blankets on the floor, it felt childish and delightful to just sit and make out like they had nowhere to be. Amos took his dick in his hand and gave him a few lazy tugs and he scooted closer, slung his legs over his, sucked his lower lip, touched him. He thought about how he wanted to do this and how to communicate that to Amos. He thought about what Amos might want. He considered all of this and just the sheer concept was the first _fun_ he’d had since landing on the planet.

Amos put his lips against his cheek as he spoke and his two days of stubble scraped like sandpaper.

“If I have any say in the specifics of this, and I feel like I do,” he started, giving Holden’s dick a particularly hard squeeze that made his mouth fall open. “First time you come, no hands. All times after that, use whatever you want.”

Holden laughed hoarsely. “Ambitious.”

“You set the bar pretty high last time. I want at least a couple out of you.”

“You’re gonna kill me.”

“Well. The devil you know, am I right?” Amos said, trailing his lips back to Holden’s own. “You wanna be up or down?”

“I… am not sure what you mean by that.”

“Knees or back.”

Holden’s dick twitched and Amos felt it and laughed. He kissed him hard because he couldn’t imagine not kissing him and his hands came up to clutch at his wide shoulders.

“Knees first, and I reserve the right to change my mind.”

Amos growled lowly in approval and nosed up under his jaw, grazed his teeth against the thin skin of his throat and grabbed at his hips and thighs until he knelt with him. There wasn’t much space in the tiny room and when Holden turned around he braced his forearms against the wall. Amos pressed his chest to his back and ran a hand down his stomach.

Holden said, “Hold on. What do _you_ wanna do?”

“Hm?

“This isn’t a favour you’re doing me. What do _you_ wanna do?”

“Fuck the hell out of you. Was I not being forward enough?”

“Yeah, but specifically. Anything you want.”

Amos’ hands tightened on his hips. “Anything?”

Holden regretted his phrasing. He wouldn’t have been thrilled to get pissed on or have things shoved places they shouldn’t go, and he didn’t know Amos well enough in that respect to put it past him.

“Sure,” he said. They’d passed through an alien portal into an unexplored galaxy and it seemed ridiculous to rule out anything in light of that. Amos hummed thoughtfully in his ear.

“I’ll keep that in mind, but you’re lucky I’m boring.”

He bit his earlobe, which was new and probably scarier than it was supposed to be. Then he moved away and his hands were on his thighs but they weren’t touching anywhere else. He twisted to look over his shoulder to see what he was doing.

“A—”

Amos’ hands spread his legs wider, he dipped down, and Holden felt him lick a stripe over his asshole.

He _squawked_.

Amos licked him again all tongue and lips and spit, his chest did a shuddery thing and he pushed back against him. Amos laughed and his breath sent fire up his nerves.

“You like?”

“It’s a lot,” Holden panted, flinching when he licked him again. “Feels weird.”

“Good weird?”

His dick pulsed and he hung his head and gurgled, “ _Yes_.”

He rested his forehead on his folded arm and drowned in the unfamiliar pleasure and the spiky thrill of embarrassment, however useless. Amos speared him with his tongue and licked and sucked and he jerked off and tried not to think too hard about it. He slid his wet fingers inside him, then his mouth, then his fingers, pushing against his prostate. When he pulled away, Holden gasped at the loss.

“We officially know each other too well. We’re too close.”

Amos laughed and kissed his way up his spine, which was new. He pressed his chest to his back and slipped his blunt, wet cock head against him.

“I’m alright with that.”

Holden worked his jaw. He didn’t think Amos was looking for an answer and he couldn’t have strung a sentence together even if he was. He pushed his hips back and Amos dug his fingers into his thighs, hard. He lined up and pushed inside him, inch by aching inch until he was buried in him and Holden was swearing and thumping his fist against the wall.

“Wait,” Holden choked out, “let me—” He caught his breath and tried to de-tense. Amos pushed his thumbs up his sweat-slick spine and said nothing, or else Holden didn’t hear him over the rush in his ears, and he felt knots in his back give way under the pressure of his hands. Amos bucked shallowly and the muscles in his hard thighs trembled from holding back. Slowly, he started to move. He was quiet, or quieter than last time. He was the Amos that regularly was, with his intense stares and words used sparingly. Holden wondered what that meant.

He reached down to touch himself and Amos snatched his hand and slapped it back against the wall. Sometimes he held his hips and slammed into him and sometimes he grabbed his ankle, leaned back and made Holden fuck himself on him. It was unbearably good, manic and fast and desperate like two people who had gone too long without, messy like two people who were deeply familiar with one another, or so unfamiliar that they didn’t care. Holden’s world narrowed to _there, there, there_ and everything else unravelled at the ends.

He stuttered, “I’m coming,” because without his hands it was a delicate thing and if Amos stopped he’d ruin it. Amos said something he didn’t catch and he twisted against his grip, made a sound that couldn’t possibly have come from him and held still as Amos hammered into him again and again and then he was _there_ , white hot pleasure like his soul was being turned inside out, his hips pushing forward for friction that wasn’t there, his dick bobbing as it pulsed and he came onto the blankets. He ground his head into his folded arm and sobbed, reached his free hand back and slapped it against Amos’ thigh to hold him still. Amos buried inside him and pressed along him all up his back, sweat pricking between their skin. Holden couldn’t tell which one of them was shaking, but he could make an educated guess.

Amos whispered, “Flip over.”

He pulled out torturously slow and kissed his shoulder. That was new. Later, Holden would be embarrassed by how fast he scrambled to get onto his back. Amos lowered himself between his legs and Holden slid his arms around his neck reflexively. He pressed his face to his tacky shoulder as he pushed back inside him with nothing but a heavy exhale, a gasp, and fucked him slow and deep while he caught his breath.

Amos and his yawning silences, his lack of superfluous movements. Amos and his stillness. Holden closed his eyes. The weight of gravity, the sweat and ache of copulation, everything blurring together into an animal _harder, faster, closer, more._ Amos was quiet. Holden was loud.

The door creaked and his heart leapt into his throat.

“ _Sorry!_ ” someone yelped.

Amos laughed like a thunderclap and Holden looked past his shoulder to the door where one of the RCE scientists stood shell shocked, flushed red. Holden barely got a look at his face before he slammed the door shut, but it was the geologist with the sharp face, Fayez.

Amos was still laughing after he was gone. He dropped to his elbows and laughed into Holden’s hair.

Holden had the sense to be mildly embarrassed. “The fuck was he _doing_?”

Amos turned his head and pressed his mouth to his temple. “Poor son of a bitch.”

He bucked into him hard, slick and slow. He slid his hands down his hips and over his ass, clutching him and tilting him up as he fucked him steady like a drum beat.

Holden laughed, “You’re fucking _handsy_ ,” too out of breath. Amos laughed back and squeezed his ass for emphasis.

“I like your ass.” He pushed inside him so hard and deep it knocked the air out of his lungs. “Thought I’d made that clear.”

Holden’s brain fizzed with dumb flattery and narcissism and he laughed like he was drunk. He dragged his nails up his back and listened to him hiss, felt the peaks and valleys of his rolling muscle under his grip. In Amos’ new silence he almost wanted to fill in the gaps with his own filthy nothingness, _you feel good, fuck me, harder, there, so close, almost there_ , like a compulsion.

Amos leaned back enough to get a hand between them and wrapped fingers around Holden’s aching cock. His expanse of bare skin under Holden’s hands felt endless and the bigger man’s breath started to shake. Holden curled into the coiled tension in the pit of his belly, his misfiring, over-stimulated nerves telling him he wasn’t done yet, reaching for more, seeking that release. He came into Amos’ fist with a sharp cry and pulled his arms tight around his neck. Amos fucked him through it and when he was done he brought his arms up around his shoulders and let his shuddering breath rush, deep inside him, still. And they stayed like that. The commissary clinked and rustled appropriately. Holden choked back air and tried to remember his name.

Amos started to pull away. Holden dug his fingers into his back and something raw and tender at the core of him said, “Stay.”

He regretted it. He didn’t take it back. Amos sighed and he felt his weight press more heavily against him as he relaxed, his head resting next to his. A hand twisted in the sweaty hair at his nape and held him. His body pounded with adrenaline, his mind was cottony and slow and his back ached from lying on the floor, but he was happy. He wasn’t thinking about anything else.

Amos pushed up on his elbows and hung above him. One of his hands smoothed Holden’s hair back off his forehead and they looked at each other for a few moments, something wordless passing between them. Amos spoke and his voice was unimaginably gentle.

“Your eyes are what-the-fuck blue.”

Not kissing him was a physical ache behind Holden’s face. Kissing him would say something he didn’t want to say. He wanted to. He couldn’t. He let his hands fall from Amos’ back and said, a little dreamy, “Keep going.”

Amos’ back curved and he let out a soft groan as his hips rolled again, easy at first and then faster as he caught the rhythm. Holden let his hands lay lax and focused on the rough blanket under his back, his stiff hips, the numbness where his body pressed against the floor. Tension poured out of his muscles and it was heaven.

Amos pressed his mouth to his temple and said, “I’m gonna come on your face.”

Holden barked a laugh.

“Oh, _are_ you?”

“That’s what I want. You said.”

Holden expected some manhandling or choking or a thing he’d never heard of. There was something so amusing and boyish about wanting to come on someone’s face and he was surprisingly sentimental over it.

“Now?”

“Now.”

Amos pulled out and stood up and Holden became acutely aware that this was another thing he’d never been on the receiving end of. He knelt in front of him, sat back on his heels and watched through his lashes as Amos worked himself in his fist in front of his face.

“Open,” Amos choked out as he took Holden’s chin in his fingers. Holden was operating on instinct too wholly to feel like an idiot and opened his mouth. He closed his eyes when he heard his breath stutter. Amos came on his tongue and across his cheek, dripping down his chin. When he curled his hand around the back of Holden’s neck and tugged, a suggestion, he leaned in, closed his mouth around the head of his dick and sucked, revelling in how he shuddered and curled in, clutched at him, spent into his mouth. He got an emphatic, “Aw, _fuck_ ,” for his efforts.

When he let him go, he looked up at him. He figured that was part of this.

“Alright?” he asked.

Amos dragged a thumb down his cheek, through his cum and over his lower lip. Without thinking too hard about it, Holden swiped his tongue out.

Amos said, “Fucking _excellent_.”

Holden laughed, mostly at himself. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and then wiped that on the blanket. Amos went to his wash station in the corner, grabbed a cloth and tossed it at him, and he missed it. Then he sat down next to him and flopped onto his back with a loud, sated sigh.

Holden cleaned his face with a detached sort of efficiency and hoped he got it all.

“You can do anything you want and you come on my face,” he said idly. “I dunno what that says about you.”

Amos hummed contentedly. “The dick wants what it wants. You get whatever you want and you pick getting reamed half to death and then held tenderly. What’s that say about _you_?”

“No comment.”

“Thought so.”

Holden tossed the cloth to the side and lay down next to Amos with his heart still hammering in his ears. Some amount of time passed. He wasn’t too concerned with how much. They were on the blankets on the floor together, no pillows, no nothing, and he knew they must have looked ridiculous.

“Didn’t think you’d wanna get back into this,” Amos said to the ceiling.

“Me neither.”

Holden considered saying something about isolation and intimacy and the summer camp thing, but he didn’t. It was worse than that. Amos was kind and loyal, smart and funny. Protective. Unnervingly steadfast. He scared him in a way that made him hum with life and tension. They were far from a perfect match, but there was more there than Holden wanted to admit. Summer ended a long time ago and Amos was still on his mind, and that scared him too badly to bring up.

He waited for Amos to say something else and forgot that he wouldn’t; whatever his occasional playfulness that came out during sex, it stopped abruptly once it was over. So he went on.

“I’m not always thinking about it. But when I do…” He trailed off.

Amos nodded slowly. “Yup.”

He should have gotten up, but it felt like there was something he was waiting for and he didn’t know what. He only half knew what they were talking about and doubted it was the same thing as one another.

Amos cleared his throat.

“I fucked some guys.”

Holden turned his head. “What?”

“Since we messed around last. Just made me think of it more, after that.”

Holden didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t that. “Okay.”

“No one important. Just…” Amos sighed quietly and rubbed his eyes with a meaty hand. Holden stopped looking at him. “Used to think there was nobody in me. You know? Just going around doing stuff. Porch light’s on, but no one’s home. Now I know there’s a guy in there, but I dunno who. Sometimes he wants stuff. It’s weird.”

Holden struggled to imprint every word of his short speech to his memory so he could unpack it later. It was already getting away from him.

He said, “That’s more than I’ve ever heard you say about yourself.”

Amos shrugged, a funny gesture lying down.

“There’s a reason for that.”

The part of Holden that needed to fix everything wanted to crawl into Amos’ chest and look around. He could catalogue all the cracks and busted wiring and put him back together the way Amos himself fixed electronics and machines. He wondered if you could care about someone enough to make that work.

He sat up.

“I gotta wash my face.”

Amos chuckled. “My water’s out, you gotta go to yours.”

“Seriously?”

“Again with the universe conspiring against you.” He beamed. “Better than daytime soaps.”

“Can I borrow a towel?”

“Have at ‘er,” Amos said, gesturing at a towel that hung on a hook near his basin. Holden stood on aching knees, took the towel and tied it around his waist. His room was next to Amos’ and he didn’t see anyone in the short hall that connected them. He shut his door, filled the basin in the corner of the room and scrubbed harsh, smelly soap onto his cheeks.

He noticed Miller over his shoulder in the grimy mirror that hung above the basin and scowled.

“ _Now_?” He bowed his head and cupped water in his hands. “When I need your help solving the mysteries of the galaxy I can’t get ahold of you, but you show up _now_?”

Miller had a funny look on his face, his glowing eyes glancing sideways, awkward. Holden splashed his face with water and scrubbed, and next time he looked up, Miller was squinting at him.

“That was a doozy,” he said.

Holden dried his face with his rough towel. The acrid soap made his eyes sting.

“What’s the deal with you knowing things you’re not _around_ around for? You see what I do, even when I can’t see you?”

“I know everything you know.”

“You don’t show up and make comments after I’m with Naomi.”

“She isn’t a source of tension for you. Amos is.”

Holden didn’t try to argue. “And that manifests in _you_.”

“In your need to talk it out.”

“And I’m guessing by your smirk that there’s enough Miller in you that you find this funny.”

“Something like that.”

“Is it the Miller part of you or the rest of you that gets off on investigating my love life lately?” He flinched inwardly at _love life_ and was glad no one was around to hear him. “My—my lovers. Where I put my dick. Whatever, _Christ_.”

He turned around and scowled at Miller proper, one hand on the knot of his towel.

Miller said, “Take a wild guess, kid.”

Holden was halfway through _what does THAT mean_ when he cut himself short. There was something he’d wanted to ask ever since ‘Miller’ first started to manifest, or after he was stable enough to start making sense. He wasn’t fully clear on how the investigator worked, how much Miller was in him versus his fading memories of what the man had been, but the question had tugged at him since Amos made a comment about it what seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Was Miller in love with me?”

Miller didn’t say anything right away and the pause was eerie, more like video lag than hesitation.

“ _Love_ is a strong word,” he said finally. Holden’s stomach dropped.

“What does that mean?”

“That he was a sad, weird guy.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means he didn’t mind talking to you and he thought about sticking it to you a few times when he was drunk.”

Holden raised his eyebrows. Hearing him talk about it in third-person was unsettling. Because it wasn’t him, not really, he didn’t look embarrassed. He thought of how Miller might have said it when he was alive, rubbing his neck, not meeting his eye. This un-Miller looked right at him as if they were talking about something easy, like aliens or another otherworldly apocalypse.

Holden said, “I see,” and Miller shrugged.

“You asked.”

The crassness of the phrase _sticking it to you_ was so innately Miller that for a second, it felt like he was talking to him. He reconsidered every interaction he had with the real Miller—lying in the medical bay together trying not to die from radiation sickness, crackling in his ear as he dragged a bomb through Eros, oscillating constantly between trusting him and hating him—and came out the other side slightly different. A little guilty and a little sad.

“Sorry,” he said. Another shrug from Miller.

“Don’t waste your sorries on a dead man, kid.”

Even his habitual _kid_ had a different flavour now, becoming strangely intimate in the presence of whatever feelings, however minor, that Miller had for him. The knee-jerk part of his brain where intrusive thoughts lived told him what being with Miller would have been like: crushing and slow, sweaty, his gravel voice, whiskey breath on the back of his neck. It was profoundly uncomfortable and, again, sad. He tried not to think about what he would have said if Miller had propositioned him while he was alive, because he didn’t. He thought about it anyways and found, to his surprise, that his answer depended on Miller’s delivery. He wondered how the man would have phrased it and apparently his best guess was _stick it to you_ , which wouldn’t have gotten him very far.

“Was he sad about it?” Holden asked.

This time, no shrug.

“No more than he was about everything.”

 

—

 

Holden returned to Amos’ room with a nagging sense of dread. He hadn’t known about Miller. What else didn’t he know? He looked at Amos spread out naked on their pile of blankets, scratching a hand idly through his chest hair, and he was nervous. It turns out, he wasn’t as kind or as perceptive as he thought. So there could be other things he was missing.

He shucked his towel and sat down with his back against the wall, Amos’ head next to his hip.

“Was that Fayez earlier?”

Amos laughed. “Yep.”

“You think he’ll tell anyone?”

“What does it matter?”

Holden hesitated.

“It changes things. Like a bargaining chip. If Murtry knows we’re...” Words filled this space imperfectly— _fucking sleeping together lovers involved complicated dating having sex almost-boyfriends MESSY_ —and he chose what he immediately recognized as a cowardly option. “...more than crewmates, that’s a thing he can use.”

If Amos thought anything of his pause, he didn’t let it show.

“Fair, but since we’ve been here, I’ve threatened to kill him, you’ve has threatened to kill him, and Alex has threatened to kill him, over our XO. So as far as he’s probably concerned, we’re all fucking each other, or else it’s the same if we’re not.”

Not for the first time, Holden felt a knot of guilt when he remembered that Alex didn’t know about him and Amos, but Naomi did. He didn’t like keeping him out of anything. Once was once but twice was a pattern, and he resolved to find some way to bring it up to him when they were all together again.

“Still,” he said again, useless.

The social aspects of being with a man were next to null—you never knew who someone was attracted to, so no one assumed anything—but Holden still found the personal aspects staggering; because it wasn’t something he shared with others, it was alarming to have it dragged into the open. He wasn’t ashamed, but whatever he shared with men was something quiet and private and entirely his own. He would have felt equally scandalized if Fayez called him _Jimmy_.

Silence stretched and Holden wasn’t immediately aware of it. By the time he was, he didn’t know how long it had been. It was a tense silence, too.

“What did it?” Amos asked lazily. “The blue eyes thing or the ‘fucking you made me wanna fuck more guys’ thing?”

Holden looked down at him. “What?”

“You’re worried I’m in love with you.”

His brain provided such a quick _no_ that it couldn’t have been true.

“I am not.”

“Yeah, you are. You got all… prickly.” He made a motion with his fingers that conveyed _prickly_ surprisingly well. “Don’t worry about it. Trust me.”

_Don’t worry about it_ wasn’t no. Holden wanted a _no_. A _no_ would keep him quiet.

“Are you?” he asked.

“In love with you?”

“Yeah.”

He did more soul searching in the three seconds before Amos answered than he had done in a long, long time.

“No.”

“Why the pause?”

“I was thinking about it,” Amos said, yawning and stretching and sitting up. “And the answer’s no.”

Holden told himself to shut up often and rarely listened. Lately, he heard it in Miller’s voice. It didn’t help.

He asked, “Is it the _truth_ , too?”

Amos gave him a funny look. Amused and affronted with a dash of offense.

“Ballsy move.”

He almost apologized. He didn’t. He fumbled through half a sentence in his mind about how this wasn’t him being conceited, it was him being scared, trying to figure out whether the thing he felt ice cold creepings of in himself was in Amos, too. The sentence got aborted. He couldn’t get it right.

Amos asked, “What would you do if I was?”

He heard Miller’s _it’ll be messy_ and it turned his guts to stone. He wasn’t. He _wasn’t._ He just needed to make sure Amos wasn’t, either.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Yeah, you do. You wouldn’t do anything about it. You’d feel bad for me, we wouldn’t fuck anymore, and then you’d move on.” He scratched his head and sighed hard. “I ain’t boyfriend material, Cap. Whatever thing that is in a person, it’s not in me."

“You—”

“Don’t answer that. It ain’t a question. I’m not that guy.”

“I don’t—”

“Are you worried _you’re_ in love with _me?_ ”

Holden gave his own pause. His stomach tensed. Amos watched him very, very carefully.

“No.”

“Why the pause?” Amos asked, smiling.

“I was thinking about it. And the answer’s no.”

“And the truth?”

Amos was mocking him and he didn’t mind. He stood and squeezed his shoulder warmly.

“I’d better go see what Fayez wanted.”

“Cap…”

“Did I stutter?”

Holden wasn’t mean, defensive, embarrassed or anything. He said the words like he meant them, because he did. He kept his hand on Amos’ shoulder and the man’s expression bled from surprise into a soft, guarded kindness.

“Nope,” he said gently. “Loud and clear.”

 

**Chapter Two: Elvi**

 

After the initial hit of the apocalyptic storm while the downpour was still howling around them, Amos announced that he was going out after the missing family and Elvi thought Holden was going to spontaneously combust. It was subtle and she wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t watching him so closely, but she was: one second, he was a regular amount of exhausted, panicked and grief-stricken based on their situation, and the next he was inconsolable. He had his hand clenched around Amos’ forearm so hard she could see the bones in his hand, his face was sunken and his eyes were wide and cold. She couldn’t hear them over the rain from where she crouched but she watched Amos’ lips, _fine, fine, be fine,_ and Holden a steady _no no no no no no_ , or _don’t_. She’d never seen him so frazzled, caked in mud and picking a fight with a guy that could rip him in half like paper. He tugged on Amos’ arm and Amos just let him, didn’t flick him off or yank back and send him flying. He just bent towards Holden and spoke, loud and hard, his face completely impassive. But eventually, he shook off Holden’s grip and charged by him out of the room towards an exit, and Holden followed him out.

Fayez said something in her ear, but she only knew it because of his movement.

“What?” she said back. He leaned closer and spoke louder.

“That was dramatic.”

She thought she was too tired to experience panic and hated that it came through when she had no bandwidth for it.

“He’s gonna go with him!”

“He won’t—”

“We can’t lose both of them!”

“ _Elvi_ , God! Mind your—”

“It’s not about that!”

She was already on her feet and slaloming through the big room after the two of them. She didn’t know what she’d say and with each step she started to regret it. Amos wouldn’t let him go with him, would he? How could she ever change Holden’s mind? Why would he listen to _her_ and not Amos? If Amos couldn’t convince him to stay, _she_ couldn’t. Still, she moved. She stuck her head out of the structure and looked frantically left and right, her eyes struggling to make sense of shapes in the sheeting rain.

She spotted two figures a few paces down the embankment and her heart started beating so fast she got dizzy.

They were devouring each other, Amos’ hands on Holden’s hips and ass pulling him tight against him, Holden’s hands shoved foolishly into the hood of Amos’ plastic rain poncho to clutch his face, torrid and passionate, honest and ugly like the way someone cried in the wake of a death. Elvi couldn’t look away. Rubbernecking a car crash. She could see rainwater and mud dripping down their cheeks into their open mouths, a flash of tongue, teeth, Holden tipping his head to press closer and kiss deeper and hang on. It was his desperation that made her glance elsewhere for a few long seconds, her face burning, her gut tight with envy and anger and a reluctant knot of lust. It was the kind of kiss you only saw in real life, not films: two people so concerned with getting a last gasp of closeness in a near-death situation that they didn’t care how it looked or who could see.

When she looked back, it took her breath away.

They weren’t kissing anymore. Holden still had Amos’ face in his hands but their foreheads were pressed together and their eyes were closed. She could see by his movements that Holden was talking quickly and quietly, inaudible over the rain, and Amos was nodding with a kind of reverence. He had his hands tight around Holden’s ribs and Holden, whom she always thought of as so strong and masculine, seemed almost delicate in that grasp. Amos was so tall that he bent over to get their faces together. It was as intimate as the kiss was animalistic, and seeing them make out was voyeuristic but watching them whisper to one another was too much. She turned away and ducked back inside before they noticed her.

She returned to where Fayez sat crouched against a wall and slid down next to him. Her face was numb and she couldn’t tell if she was cold or dead inside.

“You catch him?” Fayez asked. It took her awhile to get her tongue working and the language centre of her brain booted up.

“Holden and Amos are lovers,” she said, her voice sounding stiff and distant and not half as aloof as she intended.

“Right?” Fayez snorted. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“You knew?”

“Walked into their room the other day ‘cause Murtry needed someone to grab them.” He scrubbed a hand through the mud tracks on his face. “To think I could’ve gone my whole life without seeing that big guy’s bare ass, and now I have to live like this. In this doomed timeline.”

Elvi’s mind tore through a few uncomfortable thoughts in a rapid staccato; seeing Amos’ ass meant he was on top, _day_ instead of _night_ meant they were having sex in the afternoon or morning, the kiss she saw wasn’t spur-of-the-moment but the product of a relationship, Fayez would have _heard them_ , how did Holden sound in bed?

Fayez said, “You don’t know they’re exclusive.”

She gave herself a shake. “What?”

“If you’re worried about your chances with him, you don’t know he’s exclusive with the guy. Or that he doesn’t like women. Not that there aren’t a thousand other reasons that it’s a bad idea.”

She hadn’t considered that Holden might not be attracted to women, only that she didn’t think there could be space for a third in a relationship like that. She saw Amos’ threatening smiles and the way he hovered around Holden with a hand on the butt of his gun and couldn’t imagine that possessiveness _not_ extending into another arenas. Holden’s sexual inclinations seemed irrelevant by comparison.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“It isn’t even _my_ business, let alone yours.”

He wasn’t wrong, but she burned with shame anyways. She hated that she saw them and that it mattered to her, that with everything more pressing she had to think about, she was thinking about Holden and his lover. _One_ of his lovers, maybe.

Holden returned slicking his wet hair back out of his eyes and went immediately into a back room. Amos entered a few moments later and started shouting for recruits to brave the storm and look for the family. Elvi went over everything she knew about Holden and wished for the first time that she knew more about Amos, because she could only wonder what type of man could stop Jim Holden from doing what he wanted.

 

**Chapter Three: Holden**

 

It was somewhere around midday maybe when Holden found Amos at the far end of the main room, sitting on the ground and leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. He thought he was asleep until he lifted a hand and scratched flaking mud off his arm and he carefully stepped around the other dozing bodies, crouched in front of him and peered into his face.

Without opening his eyes, Amos said, “Cap?”

“Hi, big guy.”

“Knew it was you ‘cause no one else’d be dumb enough to get so close.”

“How are your eyes?” Holden asked softly, unable to keep the pity out of his tone. Amos opened his eyes and sat up. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, his gaze downcast and cloudy and unfocused. It hurt to see.

“Hold up some fingers.”

Holden held up two.

Amos said, “Four.”

“Two. Do you have double-vision?”

“I was guessing. Can’t see a fucking thing.”

Holden laughed sadly and Amos smiled. The speed and exhaustion made Holden’s hands jittery and his mind leapt from one thought to another, only half there, thinking more in base concepts than ideas; a neverending list of things to check on, a looming sense of dread, a mild and inappropriate amphetamine-induced horniness and a second, more urgent sense of dread that made him want to scream and scream and never stop.

“Nothing?” he asked. “Not even shapes?”

Amos sighed. “Just green.”

Holden sat back on his haunches. Failure wasn’t an option and he knew that. He’d fix it. All of it. Amos wouldn’t die, and moreover, he wouldn’t die in a cloudy green haze. None of them would. It wasn’t an option.

He glanced at the refugees around them. The low energy at the camp was oppressive. Everyone, like Amos, slumped against the floor or against other people, all of their eyes unfocused and unseeing.

“Everyone’s blind now, huh?” he asked quietly.

Amos said, “Pretty much. ‘Cept y—”

Before he was done, Holden leaned in and kissed him.

It was soft and chaste, just a press of lips, and Amos’ short beard tickled his chin. He felt one if his hands twitch up in surprise, then fall back down. After a second, he sat back. He was relieved to see him smile.

“Sneakin’ up on a blind guy,” Amos said. “Smooth.”

Holden reached out and ran a palm over Amos’ head. His buzz cut had grown out and he could see the shape of his hairline, where it was thin or bald or where it still grew. Turns out, his hair was the same russet colour as his eyebrows. He was the only person Holden knew who looked older with hair and he realized that he didn’t know exactly how old Amos was. He didn’t know much about him at all.

He put his palm on his cheek and said, “You always make fun of me for this, but—I can fix this. I fucking _swear_ that I can fix this. You know?”

“I know, chief.”

“You believe me?”

Amos took Holden’s hand in his, plucked it off his face and dropped it. Holden was too tired to stop it from slapping against the ground.

“If you don’t leave now, I’m _just_ delirious enough to try to stop you from doing something stupid and brave, an’ neither of us wants that.” Amos knocked his knuckles against Holden’s knee. “But yeah, I do.”

Holden looked down and scraped together enough brain cells to be embarrassed. “Softie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Again, delirious.” Amos said. He swiped at him halfheartedly. “Go save the world, golden boy.”

Holden patted him on the leg, leapt to his feet and left the room. A few days later, he did.

**Author's Note:**

> [tw](http://www.twitter.com/cleenteath) / [tu](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


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